Tag Archives: baby flutters

Letter To The Little One–18 Weeks

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18 weeks18 Weeks.

Wow.

It really doesn’t seem that long, little one.

You’ve grown from this little thing, barely even a peanut, all the way to be big enough for me to feel you moving and rolling from one side to the other. I listened to you kicking me last night with my stethoscope. You must have gotten bored with me playing with you and, at last, you hid from me.

I’m starting to learn things about you. You wake up and move around after I get settled at work and again after lunch. If I’ve been active that day or haven’t been able to feel you move around, I know I can sit still and play some music on my iPhone and you’ll start dancing. You’re like me… you love to move to the music. Whether it’s from the iPhone or from me singing in church or in the truck on the way home, you’ll start moving your little body around… like you’re singing with me, just with you’re hands and feet. Don’t worry, you’re cousin loves music too, and I can’t wait to see you guys playing and dancing in the floor when the family gets together.

And even though we don’t know if you’re a boy or girl yet (two more weeks till we go to find out, so please don’t be shy!), I’ve started getting your room together. Of course, the cats, especially Sophie, don’t know what’s coming. Your dad and I think they think we’re redecorating for them. Sophie loves to run and sleep under your crib we have put in there for you. I can only imagine what they’ll do when your grandpa gets done refinishing the rocking chair for the room for those nights when you wake us up to be changed, fed and rocked back to sleep. Or when we start getting gifts from showers and they think it’s theirs to play with… or when we get the mattress to put in your crib… oh boy.

Little one, even though God has given life to you inside of me, you have given my life so much already. I never thought I’d ever get to see that plus sign on a pregnancy test. I never thought I would be the one laying on the examining table getting an ultrasound to see if there’s really a baby inside of me, let alone see the little tiny heart beating. I never thought I’d get to feel what it felt like to have a baby moving inside of me. It’s amazing. Every little bit.

We’re only half way through and I love you so very much.

I can’t wait to see you again in a couple of weeks.

Love,

Mommy

Just a Swimmin’

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One thing that I looked forward to when I found out that I was pregnant was not just the cute 5-7 month basketball-shaped belly, but finding out what it actually feels like to have a little person inside of you swimming around. There were times as early as my 14th week that I felt little things like random pokes here or there, but nothing at all like this week.

Although I can’t see or feel it from the outside yet, it is so weird to be sitting at my desk and around 10-11am, if things are quiet, this little one starts moving around. If it’s not just a few pokes here and there, it feels like something soft just rolling by from one side to the next. I’ll put my hand to my bump where I felt it and I won’t feel anything for a few minutes after that. So, most of the time now if I feel it, I just sit still and let him or her move and swim as they please. And I’ll feel it off and on throughout the day, and rarely at night when I get home. I guess because I’m moving so much more than just sitting at my desk and (from what I’ve read) my moving is rocking the baby to back to sleep.

And to that, I say this:

FEELING THAT IS SOOOOO FREAKIN AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok. Just had to get that out there.

Now, for the diabetes side of things, I think I’m starting to rock between the scary lows and the irritating highs. Seriously. My CGM looked like a picture of the Rocky Mountains one day earlier this week. Some days I’m more sensitive to insulin, others I’m more sensitive to carbs. It’s kinda like the teeter-totter is starting to sway with all the other hormonal changes still going on. Of course, it could be that or the fact that I’m able to eat most anything now (except bacon.. that’s still out of the question.. I tried.) and my carb amount is starting to go from a goal to reach for meals to a restriction for meals.

In example: Lunch today. I ate a beef burrito from the local Mexican restaurant down the street. #1, in the first trimester that wouldn’t have even been something I would be able to consider without getting queasy. #2, If I did try to eat it, I would not have desired much of it and probably would have had to split it between a few meals, and would have had to eat something else to meet my 30-40 gram carb goal for lunch. Now?? I walked out of the office and craved one. So, I walked down there, ordered one, and devoured it along with half a basket of those sinfully just-gotta-eat ‘em chips they bring you to munch on before your food is served. Of course, now I am full beyond capacity and literally sick from eating the whole darn thing, and will be having to watch my bg’s like a hawk this afternoon because I’m pretty sure what I prebolused will not be adequate. I’m holding steady at 65 right now, but I’m sure once all this starts digesting, I’ll be trending upward, and not nicely.

My A1c did come back and I got a call yesterday. It’s at 6.3… down from 6.7 in mid-December and 6.6 the first part of January. I did honestly expect it to be lower since both At-home A1c tests showed me in the 5’s AND the average per my dexcom and meter was showing in the 100-110 range for the past several weeks. But of course, I keep forgetting that it does take time and it’s not going to suddenly be what you want/think it should be. The good thing is it’s trending back down to where I was pre-pregnancy. Now, if I can just keep it that way.

Smile

Jiminy Cricket!

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jiminyYesterday, after church and lunch, we went home so Erik could get some work done and relax a little before going to evening service. A couple of hours later, I sat in my recliner with my heating pad on my neck (darn headache again) and no sooner did I get comfortable and Erik started battling someone in his Transformers Xbox360 game, there was …. something. Something weird. It wasn’t my heart beating. It wasn’t a bubble. It was… I couldn’t describe it.

So, I text my sister and asked if the baby feels like little bubbles. She replied back with what most women say. “Kinda… sorta like flutters”. Well, that’s what most books and websites read, but how am I supposed to know what a flutter feels like? I’m not a butterfly. I don’t flutter around. And I don’t recall ever catching one to know. We went back and forth trying to figure out how to accurately describe this “fluttering” of what it’s supposed to feel like and if I had felt it. Then, like a sudden flashback, it hit me.

First, let me give you a little background. We used to live in (and I still do somewhat) the country. I lived on a farm where bugs and things were a normal sight with every step you took. And while I was, and still am to an extent, a girly-girl, there were some bugs that fascinated me. Like earthworms… and “rolly-pollies”. Other bugs were amazing, but too creepy-crawly for me to touch. Some down-right turned my stomach…. like spiders.

One insect that my sister and I were very accustomed to touching were crickets. If we weren’t using them as bait to go fishing on the river with (that’s a whole other story for another time), we were catching random ones that somehow, in the summer, got inside the house. It was fun because you had to be quick. It was like a game sometimes. It was mostly easy to cup your hand over the top of it to catch it. It was another story to actually maneuver in such a way to be able to check that you had caught it, pick it up and then put your other hand below to be sure it didn’t jump out. If you didn’t catch and hold it just right, it would jump out again and you’d have to start all over.

Suddenly, between texting and trying to figure out what I had just felt and put it into words to ask her if that’s what I think I felt, I was reminded of those cricket-catching days and the feeling of the cricket jumping in your hand. The soft thump when it jumped and the tickle as it walked. So I had to ask….

“Remember when we used to catch crickets?”

“Exactly!!!!!”

Later last night, I went to bed and was watching some tv and I felt it again. This time it was closer to my left side. Pretty cool, huh? My little bean is now a jumping bean. A little cricket… in me. My own Jiminy Cricket! (Yeah, I know. Weird comparing the baby to an insect, but really? We compare it’s growing size to fruit, so why not?)